Marquette Catholic goalie Lauren Fischer makes a save during a game earlier this season at Edwardsville. Fischer and the Explorers won another Class 1A regional title Friday by beating Breese Mater Dei at Moore Park in Alton.

Marquette Catholic goalie Lauren Fischer makes a save during a game earlier this season at Edwardsville. Fischer and the Explorers won another Class 1A regional title Friday by beating Breese Mater Dei at Moore

Marquette Catholic goalie Lauren Fischer makes a save during a game earlier this season at Edwardsville. Fischer and the Explorers won another Class 1A regional title Friday by beating Breese Mater Dei at Moore Park in Alton.

Marquette Catholic goalie Lauren Fischer makes a save during a game earlier this season at Edwardsville. Fischer and the Explorers won another Class 1A regional title Friday by beating Breese Mater Dei at Moore

ALTON — A bump up to Class 2A a season ago saw the Marquette Catholic girls soccer team’s regional streak come to an end at eight straight.

Motivation was definitely on the Explorers’ side, especially getting dropped back where they belong in proximity to their school size, playing Class 1A ball again.

And after some emotional — and controversial — moments that saw tensions rise from Breese Mater Dei, Marquette refocused and put it in cruise control and finished off a 4-1 victory over the Knights on Friday to claim the Marquette Regional at Gordon Moore Park.

The Explorers (14-7-2), who have won nine straight regional championships playing at the Class 1A level, move on to the Columbia Sectional Tuesday at 7 p.m. and and will face Belleville Althoff, a 3-0 winner over Waterloo Gibault in the Freeburg Regional championship game. Mater Dei’s season finishes at 12-11-2.

“Two teams and two groups of young ladies just battling it out for 80 minutes, Mater Dei played a great game,” Marquette coach Brian Hoener said. “Their girls competed hard, showed up to play. We played them earlier in the season and I’ll give Jesse and his coaching staff a lot of credit. That’s a different team than we played earlier in the season. They’re a lot better, they played hard and we made enough plays. It’s the postseason. It’s a matter of a few plays here or there that determines who goes on and who goes home. Fortunately we were able to make some of those plays today.”

The tensions came in the second half with the Explorers ahead 2-1 on goals by Lauren Fischer and Madelyn Smith. Mater Dei thought it had equalized on a free kick goal by Faith Rackers that was immediately waved off by the referee because it was called an indirect free kick that Rakers struck in directly.

Or so was called.

Mater Dei thought that Fischer got a piece of the shot, which would make it an indirect play but officials, and Fischer, said she never touched the ball with 23 minutes, 44 seconds remaining.

It deflates one team and fuels the other.

“No, I didn’t,” Fischer said when asked if she touched it. “… It’s a bummer for the other team when the refs and everything get in the way. I wouldn’t wish that upon anyone, but it all ended up fine.

“I thought my brain was gonna blow up; I didn’t know what was gonna happen. I knew that somehow, my team would find a way to comfort each other. Just find it within ourselves to stay relaxed and calm and pull out a win. … We did a good job of going down and getting those penalty kicks.”

Obviously, Mater Dei never recovered.

“We come back, and what I believe was touched (but) was called back,” Knights coach Jesse Eisenpreis said. “… That was a slight disagreement, but it is what it is. I’ll leave it at that.

“We’ve overcome some obstacles in the past. It truly is what it is. What are you gonna do? You can’t go back and change anything. You say, ‘Go back and play as hard as you can like you have all year.’ And I thought they did. For 10 on nine out there on the field, I thought we gave it one heck of an effort. They’re going to be upset, I’m upset, but we lost to a good team. Let’s be clear there. I don’t want that to get lost in this. I have all the respect in the world for Alton Marquette, especially their coach. He’s a great coach. But I just thought some things could have went the other way.”

Fischer gave the Explorers, who beat Mater Dei 2-0 on March 22, a 1-0 lead, a lead which they carried at halftime, on a free kick goal, her third of the season and all from direct spots, from 40 yards out into the top corner in the 14th minute.

“It’s pretty big time. I thought it was going to go over,” Fischer said. “It was really cool and a fun celebration to get us first on the scoreboard.

“We don’t practice them in practice, but I just practice hitting free kicks a lot and I’ve taken them all this season.”

Hoener was hopeful of the Explorers gaining a bigger halftime edge but had to withstand some adversity when the Knights’ Hannah Schulte equalized the match with 27 minutes to play.

But the Explorers answered with 24:42 remaining on Smith’s penalty kick goal for a 2-1 lead, and Ellie Jacobs converted a PK of her own with 22:52 to play to make it 3-1 before Emma Anselm added insurance with seven minutes to play to make it 4-1.

“I think it woke us up a little bit,” Hoener said of the tying goal. “And then we had a foul that led to the penalty kick, it was a good opportunity and then things kind of got a little wild there for a second there, but I think our girls did a good job of keeping their composure and just finding enough maturity to make some plays down the stretch. I’m proud of them.

“We kept on putting balls in the box. We had balls in the box, we were attacking the box and sometimes breaks fall your way whether it’s a bounce to somebody’s foot or somebody sticking out a foot to earn a penalty kick. The more pressure you put on a defense, the more opportunities you have like that and I thought we earned a couple opportunities by continuing to pressure the box and continuing to get balls in the dangerous spots. I liked the fact that after we got the second one, we didn’t slow down. We looked for that third and fourth one, which is what I wanted us to do in the first half. We had chances in the first half. We just didn’t make the plays. Second half we made a few more plays.”

The Explorers felt a sense of pressure to perform at a high level playing at the 1A level and now get another shot at the sectional level.

Roxana (16-2-3), which upended Trenton Wesclin 3-2 in overtime to claim the Breese Central Regional, will play the host Eagles (21-3-0), who demolished Murphysboro 8-1 to win the Metropolis Massac County Regional, in the opening sectional semifinal at 5 p.m.

“I think that a lot of teams and people think that when we’re in 1A, we have a lot of responsibilities and high expectations for us,” Fischer said. “I think it was very important for us, especially us seniors. We wanted to come out and make sure that we took care of business. It comes with a lot of pressure because. When we’ve been in 1A, we’ve had all these years of just winning all these regionals. It was a big bummer not to win last year, but it feels good to come back my senior year and win a regional.”